Hello, saw your post and sympathize with your dilemma. I am fairly new to trading and have been watching for 3 years(as the decline began). Education is the first thing , a lot of it is free and on-line. You should understand that you could lose a lot of dough if you are not prepared, this can be devastating. I think Ameritrade will allow you to open a direct access account for $ 2000.00 and provide you with some decent charting and streamers that will help you decide whether or not trading is for you. Just a bit of advice , start with small amounts until your accuracy level improves. You don't have to trade, you can open the account just to snoop and then close it if you don't like. Later dude
I would not recommend starting out with Penny Stocks. Very volatile, and can wipe you out quickly. I would start with some stable NYSE or NAS issues first. But, I agree with others in that you should read about a half dozen books on Trading first. Education is essential, and may save you from making some large mistakes that may put you out of business quickly.
Some good trading education websites: www.investopedia.com www.finance.yahoo.com Just follow links you find on other sites and then click on "educaion" or "training" once you reach those sites. And like the previous poster said- don't start with penny stocks. -AE
If you must daytrade stocks, then daytrade megacaps, as they are more forgiving of errors in your judgement. As far as learning goes, buy a copy of TradeStation2Ki ProSuite, or subscribe to the latest model. After you have MASTERED that software, then design some systems and trade them. I should tell you that to master that software, you will need to do a lot of side reading. Read as much as you can. Since you are a newbie, anything will do. You will need to learn for yourself what is good and what is not. Again, if you must daytrade, at your current level of development, daytrade MEGACAPS only. CSCo, MSFT, and IBM are good training stocks. Regards Oddi
Thank you all for the advice. I appreciate it. One more thing. How come penny stocks is not good for beginners?? What's the risk?? My co-worker's broker give him advice that penny stocks is good to start with and told me too. Good thing you told me guys. Thanks
It's funny you make that analogy because I was thinking just the other day while reading one of these 'newbie itchin to trade' kinda posts that at least surgeons practice on cadavers first so they can't do any more damage.
You don't start with penny stocks becuase the volume and price and incredibly low. This combination makes it easy for others to manipulate the price. In addition, a very small move in a penny stock can wipe you out. As the previous poster said, megacaps are the best to start with because volume and hence liquidity are high. Megacaps are stocks like INTC,MSFT,CSCO, etc. -AE
If you want to be a daytrader, you should trade index futures or currencies. Start paper trading on a demo. Find your own trading metod. When you get a profit week after week, you can start to trade real money. Try a demo from: http://www.saxobank.com or http://www.cms-forex.com Good luck!
all the wanna be millionaires want to trade the sub $5 and sub $2 and sub $1 pennies? once in a while I hear of success stories in these small and micro cap names usually its tears ....